Ethnic Diversity and Educational Aspirations

This thesis investigates whether students with more ethnically homogeneous friendship groups are more likely to have lower aspirations regarding future education, using longitudinal survey data on teenage students from England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. The paper finds that the main hypothesis associating higher levels of ethnic homogeneity in friendship groups and lower educational aspirations is validated by the empirical evidence for England and the Netherlands. No clear relationship is found for Germany nor Sweden.